Breathe
by chocolatebearturk
Summary: Macy shut down when her father died. She became the girl who was afraid to open her mouth, lest the grief that surrounded her rush in like so much water and fill her burning lungs. ABANDONED
1. Prologue

_**B R E A T H E**  
POTR_

Dedication: For Sabrina, because she deserves it more than anyone else._  
_

_**Chapter One: Prologue**_

Macy never had problems swimming when she was a kid. She could go for almost five minutes without taking a breath, and her lungs didn't really burn for air until the third minute. When her parents divorced, her father moved to an ocean-side bungalow on the Jersey shore. The beaches were rocky and cold for most of the year, but she knew them best from the summers she spent with her dad, when they were the most tolerable for swimming. She learned to swim with her eyes open at nine years old, and she spent a majority of her days exploring the salty, sparkling waters that ran down the eastern coast of her home state. She challenged herself every day of the summer, trying to go just a _bit_ longer than before without going to the surface for air.

Macy Misa learned how to survive without breathing.

It was a skill that came in handy, as she found out. The summer before she turned fourteen, two things happened. First, a terrible hurricane washed away her father's bungalow with him inside. Macy had never lost someone so close to her—all of her grandparents were still alive and well; she didn't have any tragic stories about aunts or uncles or cousins. She had never stared death in the face—until then. When the news came, she sucked in a breath of air that she never quite let go.

She forgot how to breathe.

Macy Misa had shut down. She became the girl who was afraid to open her mouth, lest the grief that surrounded her rush in like so much water and fill her burning lungs. The only salt water she ever wanted to feel on her face was ocean, but that dream died quickly. Her eyes, which had become accustomed to the sea water so that she had forgotten what it was like for them to burn, could not handle the bitter salt of her tears. Her cheeks were soaked with her grief, but she would not part her lips. She feared that if she let go of that last cry of anguish—if she released the only bit of air she had, all the sorrow would fill her and drown her slowly and mercilessly. Renee Misa could only watch as her daughter became a shell of the person she once was.

The second thing that happened that summer was that JONAS _really_ started getting attention after allying themselves with the Disney Channel. For some reason, though Macy had been into their music since their debut the year before with _Mandy_, she had never really spent much time thinking about the band. But now, with the release of their new album, she fell in love. Their music became an out, an escape, a way to hide from her grief. They sent her an S.O.S., told her to hold on, and that Australians were cool (which made her laugh and cry, because her parents were both one hundred percent Australian). She became so wrapped up in JONAS that JONAS became a part of her. Her mother saw Macy become herself again—bubbly and enthusiastic and full of energy.

In some ways, it seemed like her father's death had thrown JONAS' work into a new light, as though the songs made more sense now that she had truly suffered. The music spoke so clearly to her, seemed to say the things she desperately wished she could express. She resolved to learn everything she could about the band and its members; the more space she could fill up with JONAS trivia meant all the less room for brooding about her father. Somewhere along the way, though, she developed a genuine fixation.

Macy learned that Joe's shoe size was (then) eight and a half regular. She found out that Kevin had a love for chocolate-covered tacos. And she learned a _lot_ about Nick. He loved the Yankees, he drank Diet Coke, he had type one diabetes, his favorite color was (then) blue, he wrote the band's songs, he was the youngest but the most level-headed, he collected baseball cards… The lists went on and on. It took the girl that entire summer to learn everything she could, but by the end, she was _their_ number one super fan.

And yet, she still hadn't gotten hang of breathing again. She had trouble with the basics: inhaling, exhaling, and consistency. When she went to JONAS concerts, she found that she couldn't inhale if she got too close to the stage. Later, after they came to her school, she discovered that she had difficulty exhaling when she came too close to any of the band members.

She was able to do her athletics perfectly well—it was just the times when she wasn't that consistency seemed to evade her. She would talk and talk and forget to take a breath and she had trouble relaxing and sleeping at night. The only time she felt slightly sane was when she was swimming, holding her breath under the water, deliberately avoiding the surface, and forcing her brain to shut down for a few moments and just _rest_.

Macy Misa was slowly learning how to breathe again, and JONAS was definitely helping. Kevin's compassion when she discovered that she couldn't sing had her breathing deeply and evenly for days. Joe's attention while they planned Stella's party may have been intimidating at first, but it left her able to sleep at night. And just thinking about Nick seemed to clear her airways and even her erratic breathing (although being near him made her heart palpitate the way Billy Thomas did in the fifth grade). Maybe, someday, she'd be able to breathe easily and laugh with them, to whisper like a normal person, and sing like something other than a dying manatee.

**a/n: Sorry the first chapter is so short… but the second really doesn't fit with this one. In any case, I've figured out (mostly) where I want this to go, and OODLES of credit should go to LaPaige, who has been an amazing help. :D**

**Even more credit needs to go to secretfunnelcake for her AMAZIN' first time betareading skillz. :D Y'all ALL need to go to her profile RIGHT NAO and look at her stories.**

**I'm still having trouble writing this—it's giving me more trouble than I anticipated. But I'm posting it now so I'll have the incentive to go somewhere with it.**

**Well, much love!  
Beth**


	2. Dreaming

_**Chapter Two: Dreaming**_

Dedication: To all the people who waited for more than a month for me to update this thing. I'm trying, but life… she gets me sometimes. :)

* * *

"_Daddy! Daddy!" cried the little girl. She was no more than nine years old and her pigtails, though soaking wet, bounced on her shoulders as she raced up the beach to her father. She was a tiny thing, but full of energy. She seemed to vibrate with it as she waited for the man to respond._

"_Yes, Macy-bean?" He looked up from his book and had to shade his eyes. The girl had stood with the sun directly to her back, so that she almost seemed to glow in the afternoon light. He treated the young brunette to a warm smile, a rare thing these days after he had been forced to move._

"_I just saw a _HUGE_ fish in the water!" The girl spread her arms as wide as they would go, indicating the size of the creature. "It was dark and shiny and it had a mouth like—" She demonstrated by stretching her mouth wide and turning down the corners in a strange frown. She flapped her lips and jaw, trying to mimic the way she'd presumably seen the fish 'breathing.'_

_Leo Misa chuckled at the sight and laid down his book so he could sit up. He beckoned the girl closer and took her tiny hands in his. His face became very serious, but his blue-green eyes still smiled. "Do you know what kind of fish that was, Macy-bean?"_

"_You don't think it was…" Her voice dropped to a whisper and she glanced around nervously before she continued. "The _sacred cod_, do you?"_

"_Yes," her father whispered, equally 'careful' as he leaned towards her with a conspiratorial look on his face. "It was the _sacred cod_. Do you know what that means?"_

_Macy shook her head, brown eyes wide with excitement and maybe a little fear._

"_It means…" The tawny-haired man leaned ever closer, an intense look in his eyes. All of a sudden, he grinned. "That we're going FISHING tomorrow!"_

_He could have announced that Christmas was coming six months early for all the little brunette cared. Her whole face transformed; her eyes glittered and her mouth spread open in a wide, incredibly bright smile. She could have lit up the whole beach without the help of the sun, the moon, or a single star._

"Really_?" she shrieked, jumping at her father._

"_Really!" he laughed, grunting as she knocked him on his back. For revenge, he began to tickle her mercilessly until they were both too tired to even chuckle._

Macy's eyes snapped open in the darkness of her room. She drew in a huge gulp of air, not quite gasping but not breathing easily, either. She tried to let the breath out slowly, but her lungs didn't seem to want to obey her commands. She lay gasping and choking in bed with the memories running through her mind again; it was the third time that night that she'd been woken by a dream about her father. If Macy hadn't been aware of the date, she would have been a little frightened by the frequency of the dreams.

The first had been about one of her parents' anniversaries before they got divorced—before her mother had decided that she wasn't happy anymore.

The second had been more familiar, possibly due to the way memories of her early family life were fading. She had been pleading with her father to stay while he packed.

Finally breathing in a way resembling normal, Macy sat up in bed and looked at the clock. It was four-thirty in the morning. She groaned, shoulders slumping with defeat. She had probably gotten no more than three hours of sleep—and those were spent tossing and turning in the throes of painful nightmares. She was _not_ going to have a good day tomorrow. Not that she'd been expecting to, of course. She'd just hoped…

She sighed with more emotion than one would expect and lay down once again. The brunette really _did_ try to keep her breathing even, to no avail. She simply couldn't relax. If only she hadn't thrown out her humidifier on the last bet with Stella!

She rolled onto her side and stared at her JONAS alarm clock. Joe's arrogant smirk made her roll her eyes (was her blonde friend starting to get to her?) and Kevin's goofy grin had her holding back a giggle. But Nick… his shy half-smile was reassuring and she found herself smiling back, even though he couldn't see her. Macy sighed again, but now she sounded happier and more relaxed. Another memory took over her mind, but this one had nothing to do with her father and everything to do with one of the greatest days of her life. Sleep eventually gripped her again, but she nodded off this time with a smile on her face.

_JONAS concerts were always exhilarating for Macy, but this one really took the cake as one of the best. She'd won a backstage pass in a trivia contest and she could hardly wait to meet her most favorite band in the entire world. She was so nervous in the days before that she nearly made herself sick. It was only after reassuring her mother several times that she wasn't going to have a heart attack that she was even allowed near the venue._

_The concert itself had been amazing. The music was mind-blowing, the songs were insane in the most awesome of ways, and she had the time of her life dancing to them all. Joe had been even more dramatic than usual, nearly going to his knees with the microphone at times. Kevin had done more power-slides than she had ever seen him do. Nick had been all over the place—on the drums, at his piano, doing back flips across the stage._

_And although she knew better than to really believe it, she still enjoyed the private thought that they were doing it all for her, because it was her first time going back stage. It was silly, but it made it the experience all the sweeter. She just hoped she wouldn't be too star-struck when it came time to meet the Gods of Music themselves._

_If she hadn't drunk all that Diet Coke before the show, she might not have gotten the opportunity she did. If the layout of the concert hall had been less confusing, there was no way it would have happened at all. All of the things she cursed—the lack of helpful staff to point the way to the little girls' room, her total lack of direction, the confusing maps posted on the walls—led to what would be one of the greatest moments of her life._

_She rounded the corner faster than she normally would have, frustrated and in something of a hurry. But as she came around the corner, she hit something large and solid. Something that grunted when she hit it. Being the smaller object, of course she went sprawling on her back. He merely stumbled a bit, looking partially annoyed at having been half-attacked and partially concerned for the girl that had taken a pretty hard fall._

"_Sorry! I didn't mean to bump into you," she stammered, glancing up but not really taking in the other person's appearance as she returned her embarrassed gaze to his feet. She studied the somewhat familiar shoes carefully and with seeming interest, unaware that she was still sprawled on the floor. "I've been trying to find the bathroom since the concert ended. I just wanted to hurry, since I've got a backstage pass tonight—but now it's probably too late to meet the band anyway—and I just got so frustrated and I've still got to pee like no one's business…"_

_She trailed off when she realized that she had let her mouth run away with her and blushed when her words came back to her. _Wow_. She could only hope that this stranger wasn't into snap judgments._

_Needless to say, it surprised her when a large, slightly calloused hand came into view. The person, whoever it was, chuckled a little and said, "Don't worry about it. I've been here about ten times and I still haven't figured this place out yet."_

_She had reached for his hand, but froze when she heard his voice. It couldn't be anyone but _him_. She couldn't be wrong, not when she'd devoted the past year to worshiping that voice. Her head snapped up of its own volition and she could not stop the way her mouth dropped open in shock. There was no way this was real. There was no way this was happening. There was NO POSSIBLE WAY that she had just used the word "pee" in front of Nick Lucas and he was still smiling at her. (Though, by the look in his eyes, her reaction was putting a strain on his smile.)_

_Then her body seemed to take over. She took his hand and he pulled her up. His smile didn't seem to be so strained anymore and she felt proud for handling the situation. What would happen next, she couldn't be sure. She really should have been running for the hills. Especially when she noticed that he hadn't let go of her hand. She glanced down at it and back up at him, but even this didn't seem to make him want to let her go._

"_Sorry, I'm just trying to place where I've seen you before," he said._

HE_ recognized _HER_? _This_ was new!_

"_I, um." Great. Talking was obviously not the right decision at the moment. Now she was having trouble getting back the breath she'd wasted._

"_That's it!" His eyes brightened with recognition. Was it normal for her vision to get a little blurry and for the room to start spinning? "You're the one who made the fansite! Kevin couldn't stop talking about it—it's the top-rated fansite on the 'net."_

_How was she still hearing his voice over the rushing in her ears?_

"_Well, it's nice to finally meet you, Macy Misa." He gave her hand a firm shake and let go. "It's an honor."_

_Her vision cleared enough for her to see his smile—and that must've been the last straw. The last thing she remembered was the smile disappearing as concern took over his features. Then her eyes rolled back up in her head and she fell to the floor in a dead faint._

_

* * *

_

**a/n: So… I don't know what to say about this chapter. It took me two days to write and I'm trying very hard to keep these at a semi-normal length.**

**Just so you know, I feel ashamed of myself. Two dream/memories in one chapter? This is a total cop-out! I just felt like I needed something else to connect Macy to Nick, so I thought, 'Why not?' I mean, they never did tell us exactly how Macy met the band, so…**

**Urg.**

**Major thanks to Kendra (suburbs) and Kristin (crazinessgirl3) for their help and support. :)**

**Well, I guess this is g'bye. For now, anyways.**

**Much love,**

**Beth**


End file.
